The September Society

by Charles Finch

  “They have dances now, apparently.”

  “Do they! My mother would be appalled.”

  “Yes, and it seems as if they’re a pretty raucous business.”

  “I’ve been meaning to visit Timothy there.”

  “Do you have letters from him?”

  “Oh, short, polite ones, doubtless full of affection, but never with much news in them. I crave news.”

  Lenox was the only person in the world who knew about Jane’s allegiance to Timothy Stills, a poverty-stricken lad, abandoned by his mother, denied by his father, who belonged to some forgotten cadet branch of Jane’s noble family. She had heard a whisper of him and gone to Manchester a dozen years ago to find him near starvation, living on what he could beg with an aunt who tolerated his presence only for what money he brought in. Jane had taken him back to London instantly, and then arranged for his schooling and had him to visit every Christmas and during the summer holidays. She never concealed his identity, but neither did she bruit it about, as some might have.

  “Shall I look in on him when I return?” Lenox asked.

  “Would you? You’re such a dear, Charles. He’s at Oriel. I’ll write him that you’re coming.”

  “Have you been worried about him for some reason?” Lenox asked.

  “Not at all,” she said, and her unhappiness remained unspoken another moment longer. “But tell me more about Oxford, won’t you?”

  Lenox told her about visiting the Turf again, about his old friend Caule’s ghost story, about seeing Balliol and eating at the Bear with McConnell, and suddenly, as he told it to his friend, laughing along the way, it became real to him, and he felt better about it. Of course he would solve the case—and of course he would ask her to marry him.

  They both left a little while later, Lenox promising Toto that he would think over the dozens of names she had asked his opinion of, Lady Jane promising to be at Dr. Windsor’s at five for Toto’s appointment. McConnell told Lenox again that he would send the results of the coroner’s report up to Oxford, and after a number of other little reminders and last words, they all parted.

  “Well! I certainly am glad for them,” said Lady Jane, stepping into the cab that Shreve had hailed. “They seem to be awfully happy.”

  “Yes, and after things had gotten worse,” Lenox added. “Will the change be permanent?”

  “It’s just what Toto needs, I should say, something to dote on and love and make dozens of small but significant decisions about. And it will give Thomas an heir and less time with his thoughts. Yes, I think it will be permanent.”

  “I certainly hope you’re right.”

  They rode along, the two friends, until they had come to Hampden Lane.

  “Are you definitely going back to Oxford, Charles?”

  “Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

  “Do stop in on Timothy, then. And hurry back afterward. I won’t be able to see you again before you go if I’m to meet Toto at her doctor’s office.”

  They stood in front of their adjoining houses, the light dimming. “I meant to say, Jane—is everything quite well?”

  Hurriedly, she answered, “Oh, yes, of course. It always is. Now, good-bye, Charles!”

  Lenox walked back down her stoop and up his own. It was dark, and he knew that he had ahead of him a long train ride across the bleak landscape of an autumn night in England. Still, it wouldn’t do to put it off until the morning.

  Sitting by the fire in his study, waiting as Samuel packed his bags and the driver rubbed down his horses for the trip to Paddington, Lenox read distractedly over an essay he had written for the upcoming Roman Historians’ Conference, which was meant to take place in Vienna in a month’s time. His tickets were booked, and he was pleased with his essay, which had to do with childhood in Augustan Rome. A friend and correspondent from Cambridge, Bertie Flint-Flagg, had sent it back in the post with his congratulations and a few minor corrections. He also mentioned a term-time teaching fellowship available at Magdalene, a small college with an excellent reputation in classics, which he thought Lenox might be suited for. As perhaps the premier amateur historian of Rome in the Isles, James Hawthendon aside, Flint-Flagg wrote (and this threw Lenox into a slight dudgeon), he really ought to try his hand at academic life. Suddenly Lenox had a vision of himself with a pipe, a small back garden, a spacious study in Magdalene or Clare or Caius, a wall full of books, the companionable presence of other scholars—and perhaps it was seeing Dallington that morning, but even as he envisioned that happy life, even as his heart leapt at the prospect, he knew that he could never abandon the hard and taxing work that won him so little worldly respect, and that he knew to be as high and noble as any calling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  McConnell’s report on the inquest of Peter Wilson arrived at Oxford the next evening. It had been a discouraging day for Lenox. Inspector Goodson’s sergeants had searched to the south of the town past Christ Church Meadow, not quite as far as Faringdon and Didcot, asking in pubs, post offices, and inns, but nobody had seen Dabney or Payson. Lenox’s suggestion had been well reasoned, Goodson said when the two men met, not adding that it had failed nonetheless.

  “Did you search the fields?”

  “Aye, and asked the locals too. Nothing there.”

  “Perhaps it’s best to restrict the search—bring it back in within a quarter mile of the meadow and search that quarter mile very thoroughly.”

  Goodson shook his head. “We don’t have the manpower. We’ll have to follow other leads.”

  “What has there been?”

  “We’re focusing now on the man who met Payson at the Jesus College dance that Saturday evening.”

  “Just so. Anything on him?”

  “That’s a bit better—but only a bit. We’ve tracked him to an inn at Abingdon, we believe, and he left his name there as Geoffrey Canterbury.”

  “A man of at least small literary knowledge, then.”

  “Aye, The Canterbury Tales, we thought so, too.”

  “Any further description of him?”

  “Only that he looked about fifty, dressed well, had very dark hair, a mark on his throat, and carried a heavy pocket watch that looked to the landlady—Mrs. Meade—expensive, perhaps ornamental. He seemed to check it and handle it constantly.”

  “Still, better than nothing. What did he leave as a forwarding address?”

  “Only a steam liner bound for India—which, it turned out, departed a month ago for Delhi.”

  “Was he tan?”

  “Pale.”

  “And not military by the look of him.”

  “No, not according to Mrs. Meade.”

  This conversation had taken place at the police station a little after one o’clock. Waiting for Dallington, Graham, and McConnell all to report back, Lenox had no choice but to resume his dull research at the Bodleian. Nothing else had come to light, and he had given it up as a bad job a bit after four. Now it was five, and a bellboy had brought in McConnell’s note with the evening post. Graham was still out on Hatch’s trail, but had assured Lenox he only needed one more day to see what he could find out about the elusive professor.

  The parcel contained three things: a short note on yellow writing paper, a more formal letter on long paper, which evidently appraised the coroner’s report, and then the report itself, which Lenox would have to return to Jenkins at Scotland Yard. The short first note turned out to be from Toto. It read:

  Hallo Charles! I’m with Jane (it’s about 9:00 in the morning here, when shall this get to you?) and she thought we ought to tell you that I’m healthy and that I mean to call the baby Malory if it’s a girl. Isn’t that a sensible and lovely name? Malory McConnell—I think it sounds awfully well. P.S. Do return soon, and stop Thomas poring over reports all day! Affectionately, TM.

  Lenox laughed and folded the note back in half. He paused for a moment, then put it in his leather correspondence case. At any rate Lady Jane had been there at its writing, so it deserve
d preservation. Smiling again at the folly of the mind in love, he turned to McConnell’s more serious note.

  Hello, Charles. Thanks for letting me have a look at this. I may as well say straight off the bat that I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that will instantly solve your case—in fact the coroner, Bellows, did quite well with a tricky matter. As near as I can tell, Peter Wilson probably did commit suicide. But there’s some room for doubt, which may perhaps be of interest to you.

  Wilson died in Suffolk, at the country house of a friend, Daniel Maran. It was September of last year, and the two men as well as half a dozen others were evidently escaping from London for the weekend—you can no doubt decipher all of that in the report yourself. Wilson went off on his horse one morning alone, taking his air rifle with him. He would have known how to handle guns himself, of course, having hunted since youth and served in the Suffolk 12th. The gun was a light one, suitable for small game. And in fact he was ultimately found in a thicket of mature woodland that Maran used as a pheasant cover. The horse returned home; Maran formed a search party, and they found Wilson dead.

  The angle of the gun is the one thing that forced Bellows to the conclusion of suicide, rather than merely accident. The gun was angled up slightly so that the bullet hit his right cheek—from a distance of two feet or so. This seems to mark a clear intent on Wilson’s part. However, a small part of me is uncertain that this was how he would have killed himself—it was a position which would have forced him into an awkward half-kneeling stance, as the gun would have had to rest on the ground. Looking over my files, I find that it’s almost unique as an angle of entry in most suicides by air rifle. On the other hand, murder in the same way would have been relatively easy for somebody in the undergrowth.

  Weighed against this, though, is the overwhelming fact of the position of Wilson next to the gun when Maran found him—Wilson was lying across the gun with his hand still tightly gripping the weapon that killed him. It would be very difficult to manage a body to make it fall in that way—a shot from the ground would have probably sent Wilson staggering backward.

  One other thing supporting the theory of suicide: Pheasant hunting doesn’t begin until October, and Maran’s gamekeeper insists he would have found it poor sport. Wilson went out there for a reason other than hunting, it would seem.

  Sorry this isn’t more helpful—Thomas

  Scrawled beneath the doctor’s signature, in less precise handwriting, was the following:

  Incidentally, you’ll find a note from Toto here—no doubt you’d do well to ignore its entreaties, but I’ll leave that to your discretion. TM.

  Lenox was grateful to McConnell for his diligence, but the results were disappointing; the detective felt as if he were reaching for something substantial, only to find himself grasping the air every time. Still, it might be that Dallington could find something useful about Maran.

  Maran. Didn’t he know that name? Tossing the letter on his desk, Lenox stood up. Hurriedly he put on his coat and left the room, leaving his candles burning.

  He left the Randolph and found himself on Broad Street, ignoring the students let off of their tutorials coming from Balliol and Trinity, striding past them toward the Bodleian. He went straight in and up to the Reading Room, where he pulled out Who’s Who from its spot on the bookshelf where he had left it. He found Maran easily in the book and read over the entry twice, copying it out carefully in his spiral-bound notebook the second time. Well. Daniel Maran was without a doubt a member of the September Society. The most important so far, perhaps. He had served in the 2nd Battalion, 12th Regiment of Foot, Suffolk, just as Wilson and Lysander had—a captain. Unlike them, though, he was no mere retired military man, in and out of his clubs.

  Back at the Randolph, Graham had returned. He was in Lenox’s rooms, laying out an evening suit; Lenox was to dine with McConnell’s friend Radley, the one who had telegraphed down to London about Payson’s death.

  “Any luck?” Lenox asked.

  “Perhaps, sir,” said Graham. “I thought I might organize my thoughts while you were at supper.”

  Having waited so eagerly for information about Hatch, Lenox was suddenly unconcerned. “Of course,” he said, waving a hand. What was this Society devoted to a long-forgotten battle? Why was anybody but an old codger or two at the Army and Navy Club worried about it? Above all, how was it related to Payson and Dabney? Dabney—there was the lead to follow, now that none of the others seemed to have panned out. He would speak to Goodson about it in the morning. Were Dabney’s parents even in Oxford at the moment?

  “Have you heard of Daniel Maran, Graham?”

  “No, sir, I don’t think I have.”

  “I just read up on him. A thoroughly undistinguished military career, followed by an unexpected and unexpectedly well funded stand for Parliament.” Putting a cufflink in, Lenox went on, “He’s a government official now. Works at the War Office Building on Whitehall Place, just by Scotland Yard. Do you know it? Opposite the Horse Guards building, if you’ve been down there. I imagine that he reports directly to the minister there.”

  “How did you hear of him, sir?”

  “He’s a member of the September Society. And the master-general of the Ordnance.”

  “If I may ask, sir—”

  “The master-general of the Ordnance is a Member of Parliament, usually in the cabinet, in fact—and the only member of the British military who doesn’t have to report to the commander in chief. It’s a tremendously powerful and influential position. He arranges for the procurement of artillery and supplies, manages our fortifications … millions of pounds pass through his hands every year. It used to be Baron Raglan, you recall.”

  This was a famous general who had done well in the Crimean War, and whose name was a byword for military integrity throughout the Isles. It disturbed Lenox that the quality of the man occupying the position had fallen off so precipitously. Maran had done little of note besides finding himself in Parliament before attaining the position.

  “My goodness, sir,” said Graham—for him as violent as language could become.

  “Yes, I’d reckon he knows every secret about the British government that’s worth the having. My brother described him to me once as the most dangerous man to cross in all of Whitehall.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Supper with Radley was interesting, and better still it was distracting. A professor of biological sciences at Worcester, he had great enthusiasm for McConnell’s work as an amateur biologist. His own passion was birds. For much of the meal he had laid out the objections to the theories of evolution that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace had proposed a few years ago and that were still widely debated in the scientific community. Probably impossible, though very clever, was his conclusion. “The best we’ll say of Wallace and Darwin is that they gave us new ways of thinking about animal growth, which could spur on other, more plausible theories.” He appeared to be in a diminishing majority, however, and Lenox reminded himself to ask McConnell his thoughts on the matter. In all, though, Radley was a genial, undeniably good sort, and their conversation was pleasant, if heavy on birds.

  After supper Lenox had gone for a long, thoughtful stroll around Addison’s Walk, the path that wound narrowly around a small island within the grounds of Magdalen College. It was a beautiful ring that led away from and then back to the college, the ground level and only inches away from the quiet, rolling Cherwell River. He remembered its pristine beauty under fresh snow from his undergraduate days; once, despondent over some long-forgotten exam, he had gone to the Walk at dawn and come out feeling better, slightly better. This evening he had smoked his pipe and thought about the case, the cool air clearing the wine from his head, a don passing now and then, the view of Magdalen Tower up in the middle distance …

  Just back in his rooms now and removing his coat, he said to his butler, “Well, Graham, if you have any questions about the blue chaffinch or the gray-rumped swallow, I imagine I can answer
them for you pretty exhaustively by now.”

  “Thank you, sir. Perhaps some other time.”

  “Sensible. Swallows and chaffinches are good in their way, of course, but too much of them is inadvisable.”

  Graham had given him a glass of brandy, and Lenox was sitting in his shirttails in a blue high-backed chair near the fire. He invited the butler to sit down opposite him and take a glass; Graham assented to the first offer but declined the second.

  “Hatch, then,” Lenox said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope you’ve found something interesting out?”

  “I think I have, yes, sir.”

  “Go on.”

  Graham looked at the notes in his lap. “The gentleman is called John Braithwaite Hatch, sir, Bingham Professor of Chemistry. Aged thirty-eight. Born and grew up in North London, a rural area near Ashburton Grove. Educated at Westminster College, having earned a scholarship. On to Lincoln, Oxford, after that. Stayed as a fellow after finishing his undergraduate coursework, and soon became a don.”

  “Much distinguished as a scholar?” Lenox asked, cradling his brandy in his hand.

  “He was, sir, yes, though he hasn’t published anything in two years.”

  “I see.”

  “His servants universally ascribe his current stagnation to his love of drink, sir.”

  “I’m not wholly surprised.”

  “What I have to report otherwise is concise but I hope useful, sir. You told me that you thought Mr. Hatch had lied to you twice, about George Payson’s cat and about the last time he had seen the missing gentlemen. I can add to your statement two extremely suspicious facts. The first is that he saw George Payson on the morning of his disappearance.”